María José Frápolli and Kurt Wischin interview Prof. Robert B. Brandom (Disputatio 2019)

From Conceptual Content in Big Apes and AI to the Classical Principle of Explosion An Interview with Robert B. Brandom: An Interview with Robert B. Brandom

In this Interview, Professor Robert B. Brandom answered ten detailed questions about his philosophy of Rational Pragmatism and Semantic Expressivism, grouped into four topics. 1. Metaphysics and Anthropology, 2. Pragmatics and Semantics, 3. Epistemic Expressivism, and 4. Philosophy of Logic. With his thoughtful and precise answers, Professor Brandom offers many additional insights into his rigorously constructed account of the relationship “between what we say and think, and what we are saying and thinking about” around the human practice of asking for and giving reasons. A final, additional question pointed at a principal motivation for putting together the present issue: how to reconcile Wittgenstein’s assertion that philosophy must not proffer any theories with the very explicit system of explanations Brandom has constructed. This same issue is addressed to some extent already in Professor Brandom’s new article contained in this issue. Still, his answer, asserting that he does not proffer a theory but only makes explicit what is already there, might be seen as an unambiguous statement of the continuous presence of a contested Wittgensteinian principle in Brandom’s work.

María José Frápolli and Kurt Wischin interview
Professor Robert B. Brandom
July 2018

Interview in Disputatio: https://disputatio.eu/vols/vol-8-no-9...

Special Issue: Linguistic and Rational Pragmatism: The Philosophies of Wittgenstein and Brandom, edited by Kurt Wischin: https://disputatio.eu/vols/vol-8-no-9/